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Thursday, February 25, 2016

Thomas Piketty — A New Deal for Europe

We have a single currency with nineteen different public debts, nineteen interest rates upon which the financial markets are completely free to speculate, nineteen corporate tax rates in unbridled competition with one another, without a common social safety net or shared educational standards—this cannot possibly work, and never will.

Only a genuine social and democratic refounding of the eurozone, designed to encourage growth and employment, arrayed around a small core of countries willing to lead by example and develop their own new political institutions, will be sufficient to counter the hateful nationalistic impulses that now threaten all Europe.…

If France, Italy, and Spain (roughly 50 percent of the eurozone’s population and GDP, as against Germany, with scarcely more than 25 percent) were to put forth a specific proposal for a new and effective parliament, some compromise would have to be found. And if Germany stubbornly continues to refuse, which seems unlikely, then the argument against the euro as a common currency becomes very difficult to counter. Currently, a Plan B involving the abandonment of the euro is being touted by the far right, a policy that is increasingly tempting to the far left. Why don’t we start by actually giving a chance to genuine reforms that would make the eurozone work for the common good?

One world idealism has been the totem of the left since they all started smoking weed in the 60s. It was a reaction by that generation of people to the wars at the time and the wars that had gone before.

The evidence is building that it doesn't work. Because, guess what, humans are tribal.